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The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a evening declaration about its decisions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Erode Confidence'

The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."